Your mother is SO fat……Obesity in society.

Saturday, April 14th, 2012 at
2:36 pm

Obesity is the last acceptable prejudice in our society.

I’m not really sure how this happened but the politically correct movement seems to have skipped over obesity in society. It was almost as if all of the comedians of the world got together and said “Well, we can’t make fun of people’s sexual orientation anymore, or nationality, or color of their skin without getting slammed by the media. What are we going to do to make a living? FAT people!! That’s it!! No one will care if we still make fun of fat people!!” Don’t believe me? Here’s a simple test to prove my point.

Acceptable joke about obesity in society.
“That guy is so FAT I bet he could eat an entire fried chicken all by himself”

Unacceptable joke about race in society.
“That guy is so BLACK I bet he could eat an entire fried chicken all by himself”

You can play this game at home. Go ahead, give it a shot. Take any fat joke and substitute the fat phrase for a racial phrase and you’ll see what I mean. All I did was change out one word in the joke and it goes from hysterically funny to racially offensive. Say the first joke and you end up on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Say the second joke and you end up on the evening news with Al Sharpton calling for a complete boycott of you and anyone associated with you.

It’s ok to make fun of us, discriminate against us at work, socially, and generally make us feel like we don’t have a voice in the world. It’s because of this allowable prejudice that obese people feel like they have to live their entire lives in shame. Like we are a bunch of clowns here to amuse the rest of the population. (My apologies to Joe Pesci and Goodfellas, still one of my favorite movies!) It’s up to us to change this perception. To let people know that sometimes, no matter what you do or how you eat, you are just meant to be overweight. It’s God’s plan for you and who are we to question God. You can read about my own personal journey of living with obesity here. My entire purpose as a blogger is to raise awareness of the struggles obese people live with every day and to encourage obese people to live a healthier life. Living a healthier life means going out into the world and living your life to the fullest no matter what size you are! All of the obesity products I review must accomplish this goal first and foremost.

We are not alone.

The World Health Organization estimated in 2002 that there are over 1.7 BILLION obese people. That’s billion with a “B”. To give you an idea that’s roughly 20% of the entire population of the earth, and that was over 10 years ago. The numbers have only continued to climb. I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase before, “Obesity is an epidemic”. Well, an epidemic is a word used to describe a disease, and that is exactly what I believe obesity in society is, a disease. There is no one definable cause for obesity. It can be genetic, economic, environmental, behavioral, psychological, medical or combinations of all of these. Despite what society would want us to believe, obesity is not always a voluntary choice. So while we should be working on curing the disease for as many people as we can because it does have some serious health complications, we should NOT be making fun of people who are currently suffering from this disease and making their lives even harder.

It’s time to stand up for our rights and let the world know that making fun of obesity in society will no longer be tolerated.